I forgot about Waterboy!
Waterboy (real name Nick) used to come into the cinema where I worked. He was in his late thirties but had a mental age of around nine or ten, lived with his parents who cared for him (despite letting him out on his own), and mostly just spent his allowance on cinema tickets. He didn't fully understand the idea that you bought one ticket to see one film, watched it to the end, then left, so he would frequently leave halfway through with cries of "don't like that one". He would then change his ticket for another film (we often let him get away with this because he didn't really undertsand). Sometimes he would just come in and engage in utterly inane conversation with members of staff while a queue formed behind him and we tried to get rid of him. He had absolutely no concept of subtlety, grace, or propriety, but was for all intents and purposes a harmless individual. His worst crime was occasionally staring down women's tops and dribbling (he had no idea why this was a bad idea - frankly, I'm on his side there), or asking a perfect stranger to guess what was in his bag. This almost got him into trouble once or twice.
So, why "Waterboy"? Well, simply put, he used to have a fetish for films with water in them. His routine for purchasing a ticket would be to point at the list of films showing and ask the following questions: "What's that one called?", "What's it about?", "What time's it start?", "What time's it finish?" and "Has it got water in it?" He would do this over and over for as long as it took for the victim of this insanity to ask him in the politest possible terms to either pick a film or let the person behind him have a go. He would ask each question of each film in a completely random order, asking the same question several times for each film, until he finally bought a ticket. Then he'd go through the same routine with the person who took his ticket at the door to the screen.
One day the water fetish came to an abrupt halt, when he left a screening of "Titanic" in a state of some disarray with the immortal words "That's got too much water!" Strangely, he really liked "Waterworld".
Classic stuff.
(The Ghost of Stephen Foster, Thu 16 Sep 2004, 22:33, Reply)